


lost in the fog, these hollow hills

by taywen



Category: Uprooted - Naomi Novik
Genre: Altered Mental States, Banter, Gen, Imprisonment, Post-Canon, Rivalry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:09:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21739639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taywen/pseuds/taywen
Summary: The cell was cramped, and damp, and Sarkan’s only company was an utter pest. Besides Solya, there was also a rat.Sarkan and Solya get locked together in a cell; they take this about as well as one might expect.
Relationships: The Dragon | Sarkan & The Falcon | Solya, minor Agnieszka/The Dragon | Sarkan
Comments: 5
Kudos: 72
Collections: Uprooted Holiday Fic Exchange 2019





	lost in the fog, these hollow hills

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Overwrought](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Overwrought/gifts).



> written for overwrought for the Uprooted Holiday Exchange 2019 over on [uprootedficathon](https://uprootedficathon.tumblr.com/)! I hope you've had a good holiday season, overwrought!
> 
> the working title was "two wizards one cell" because I'm a) a terrible person and b) terrible at thinking of titles. fortunately I dug up some fitting lyrics from Florence + the Machine's song "Long & Lost" instead.

The cell was cramped, and damp, and Sarkan’s only company was an utter pest. Besides Solya, there was also a rat, or multiple different rats that only ventured singly through the hole in one corner; he could not be entirely certain. Nieshka could have told him which it was, but unfortunately he only had Solya, who likely could have discerned a hundred minor variations in a glance himself but would never deign to do so.

The—only?—rat crept out of the hole and snuffled about. Sarkan watched it come closer; it was a change, at least.

“Must there be _rats_ ,” Solya hissed, his usual courtly affect long-shed since their confinement in this dank cell. He kicked out at it, and the beast scurried away again.

“Is it multiple rats, then?” Apparently Solya’s was not the only slipping facade, but deprivation had always driven Sarkan to extremes. He had nearly burned down Varsha in an attempt to warm himself in his mostly-forgotten youth, after all.

Solya’s glare shifted from the rat-hole to Sarkan. “I don’t know, and I don’t _care_ to know.” The chain binding the magic-suppressing manacle around his left wrist clinked gently against the wall as he gestured for emphasis. The manacle’s mate enclosed Sarkan’s right wrist; their captors had only the one pair, and a handful of crumbling cells. Rank amateurs, which made their confinement of two of Polnya’s foremost wizards even more of an embarrassment.

Alosha would probably laugh herself sick if she could see them, or give them the lecture of their lifetime. Solya was probably accustomed to it, but Sarkan hadn’t been subjected to one of her disappointed lectures since his time as an apprentice. Still, it would be an improvement over their current confinement.

“If only there had been two sets of manacles, I could have overloaded mine and we’d be free,” Sarkan said, to distract himself from the gnawing hunger. It came and went, but it seemed especially insistent this time.

“Could you really?” Solya sounded appalled and envious all at once.

Sarkan nodded, and tried not to stare at the rat. He’d eaten worse as a child, but he was not that child any longer, and he would not stoop to devouring _vermin_ raw. Especially not in front of Solya.

“Can you not now—?”

“The suppression is uneven—”

“—and working magic is too unpredictable,” Solya finished, scowling down at his free hand. The manacles were connected by a single long chain threaded through a loop driven into the stone above their heads. It was just short enough that one of them could sit, with his arm raised, if the other stood with his wrist as close to the loop as possible.

“It’s your turn to stand,” Sarkan said. He’d stoically ignored Solya’s attempts to prolong his own periods of sitting at first, but he was long past that.

Solya grumbled, and stood up with a groan. They could stand together with their chained arms almost in a neutral position, which they did now. Sarkan flexed his fingers as circulation returned and tried not to grimace.

Their situation was, in a word: miserable.

* * *

The manacle was made of a shining silver metal. It was not silver itself, or if it was it had been worked extensively. The metal fairly gleamed in the dim, flickering torchlight, and it radiated a cold that seemed to sink into the very marrow of Sarkan’s bones. The cuff lay flush to his wrist, the skin around it red and raw from chafing.

“One of us could break our thumb and slip out of the chains,” Sarkan said, looking up from the manacle.

Solya twitched, blinking rapidly at Sarkan: he had been dozing. Sarkan did not apologize for waking him, though he regretted it.

“Could you heal your own thumb?” Solya asked after a moment.

Sarkan considered it. Solya was useless at healing magic, but while he had some aptitude for that branch of magic, Sarkan was no Willow either. All of the workings he knew required gestures and forms that would be difficult or impossible to do with a broken thumb, to say nothing of the complication of casting it on himself.

His answer must have been obvious, for Solya said, “If I broke my thumb, it would be for nothing. You would still be trapped, I can hardly heal more than a bruise, and these chains are enchanted to resist foreign workings as well.”

They stared up at the chain, and loop spiked into the wall, but they’d spent most of the second day trying to pull the entire thing free. Despite the crumbling nature of the wall, the loop held fast.

“The manacles are too tight in any case,” Solya said at length. “I don’t think either of us could slide our hand out even with a broken thumb.”

“Likely not,” Sarkan conceded.

A few minutes later, Solya was asleep again and the rat crept out. It sniffed around Solya’s boots, though it seemed to know better than to come within reach of Sarkan. Not that he could catch it with his arm outstretched above his head, not without waking Solya once more. Sarkan watched it carefully, perhaps for a matter of minutes, or hours; impossible to say how much time passed before it grew bored of them and scampered back to its hole.

* * *

“If we combined our magic,” Solya said, possibly the next day. The passage of time was difficult to track down here, where the dim torchlight never changed.

Sarkan looked at him. The very thought was repulsive, of course, but it had also already occurred to him.

“It wasn’t too unpleasant when Agnieszka and I healed you after you tried to become one with that heart-tree,” Solya added, so lightly that his tone could only be veiled malice. “And you seem to enjoy merging your magic with her.”

Sarkan did not deign to respond beyond tugging pointedly on the chain—they were roughly of a height, but Sarkan was the stronger of them magically and physically, which they both knew. Solya still had a bruise high on one cheek where he’d scraped it against the wall when they’d devolved into a shouting and shoving match on their first day in here.

“The principle is sound,” Solya insisted. “By closing the channel—” his free hand twitched towards Sarkan’s, as if in demonstration, “—the suppression would be complete, and you could overload the manacles.”

“In theory.” Although he had been turning the idea over in his mind for some time already, Sarkan found himself strangely reluctant to commit to it.

“Assuming your claim earlier wasn’t mere boasting,” Solya added in that same false-mild tone as earlier.

“I am more than capable of breaking this enchantment,” Sarkan snapped in spite of himself. “But I draw the line at using you to do it.”

“ _Using_ me—”

“I don’t require you to repeat my words back to me, Solya,” Sarkan said coldly.

They glared at each other, the temperature spiking and a sudden breeze rising around them: Sarkan and Solya’s magic reacting to their emotions. If only they could work it consciously, without the interference of the manacles—

Sarkan stepped back, as much as the chain and the close confines of the cell allowed. “That was unworthy of me,” he said stiffly. Before either of them could dwell on the almost-apology, he swiftly added, “Neither of us is Agnieszka. It must be some innate quality—”

Solya yelped suddenly, and kicked Sarkan hard in the shin.

“Sorry,” Solya said, wild-eyed enough that he seemed sincere, “that fucking rat was back.”

Sarkan looked over at the corner instinctively, just in time to see its tail disappearing into the hole.

“ _Is_ it only one rat?” Sarkan asked.

“Who cares!”

* * *

They lingered in silence until the rat returned once more. Sarkan did not even notice it initially, until he felt Solya stiffen beside him: they were both standing, shoulder-to-shoulder, in an attempt to conserve warmth. They had not been reduced to huddling together yet, at least.

The rat’s fur was sleek and gleaming in the torchlight as it meandered toward them. It was rather plump. Better-fed than the two wizards, at least. Where did it get its food? There were no crumbs to be found here, for their captors had brought them nothing to eat, but presumably there was food available elsewhere.

Solya was glaring with unusual heat at the rat. Sarkan kicked a bit of grit at the thing and it scurried back into its hole.

“Why do you hate it so much?” A poor choice of conversation topic, perhaps, but there was little else to discuss.

“They disgust me.”

“Falcons eat rats—”

“I am no more my namesake than you are yours,” Solya hissed.

Sarkan inclined his head, conceding the point, and took his turn to sit. He had nearly fallen asleep when Solya spoke once more.

“Do you remember the war with Chekya?”

“Which one?” Sarkan asked, though he thought he knew the answer already.

“The one nearly a century ago,” Solya said impatiently. “It began—oh, five years or so after you went to safeguard the Wood.”

“I remember it.” Solya had been wild to best Sarkan at something, when they were first Named. Well—he still was, though it should have been obvious by now that Sarkan was the superior wizard in nearly every aspect of magic. Nevertheless, Solya had volunteered eagerly to go to war with Chekya, and he’d been involved in almost every major conflict thereafter.

“They had a witch whose magic was—wild. Feral. Her workings did not follow any sort of rules or forms that I had ever encountered, though at the time I just assumed she was powerful and had access to tomes that I knew not. She was certainly old enough for it.”

“The Nightingale.” Stories of those battles with Chekya had filtered even to the valley, and they came back to Sarkan now though he had not thought of them in ages. “I’d forgotten she had an avian name like you.”

Solya narrowed his eyes. “Don’t compare the two of us, and stop interrupting.” Sarkan gestured for Solya to continue before he could work himself into a righteous indignation. “She was called Nightingale because she had a silver tongue. She tried to seduce me on the first night, but her glamour was not strong enough to fool my eyes.”

“It wouldn’t have worked even if she was the most beautiful woman in the world,” Sarkan said drily.

“Regardless,” Solya scoffed, but he looked pleased by the assessment when Sarkan craned his head back to check. “She tried the same with the general the next night. He was not so discerning, and she laid a curse on him that struck him dead in the midst of battle the third day. I had noticed something off about the general but the Chekyans struck early in the morning and I had to support the front lines. I still don’t know what the curse was, but I can tell you its effect: rats—boiled up out of him. I think they chewed their way out, and they turned on the rest of the senior officers from there. Their bodies were at least recognizable; there was nothing left of the general. The standard-bearer, the sole survivor, insisted that the rats had come out of the general.”

That part hadn’t made it into the stories and songs. There were few songs about that war—the Chekyans had won, more or less, though the border had remained unchanged. The Polnyan army had taken more casualties, certainly, though Solya had slain the Nightingale in battle. Sarkan had only known that the majority of the senior officers were killed, not the manner of their deaths.

“At the same time, the Nightingale released a torrent of rats on the front lines, to similar effect. I saw their work firsthand. They were only rats, but they found gaps in the soldiers’ armour, or _chewed_ through solid metal—” Solya shuddered. He had nearly perfect recall, which Sarkan had never considered might be more of a curse than a blessing before this moment. “They were vulnerable to fire, but I lacked the control to strike only the rats. Still, the soldiers on the front that survived thanked me afterward, though the Willow complained bitterly about all the burns she had to treat.”

Sarkan had been ordered to produce the strongest burn salve he knew in the largest quantities possible around that time. He’d been irritated by the command, but it had come directly from the king, so he’d complied. He hadn’t realized what the potions had been used for.

“The Nightingale must have been powerful,” Sarkan said into the heavy silence. “That cannot have been an easy fight.”

“I think her magic was similar to Agnieszka’s,” Solya said. Before Sarkan could dispute that claim—Nieshka would never use any living beings like that—Solya added, “Or perhaps—as dissimilar from the magic you and I practice as Agnieszka’s, but in a different direction.”

“Before I came to Kralia, I nearly burnt Varsha to the ground,” Sarkan offered into the heavy silence. It felt like the only proper response, in the face of Solya’s confession.

Solya shifted, the length of chain clinking faintly. “I’ve heard something about this before.”

“Yes, the older apprentices liked to bring it up whenever they were reminded that my talents far exceeded theirs.” Solya had been one of those apprentices; though he was a few years older than Sarkan, he’d begun his training years after. “I was cold, so my magic produced a fire. I was always cold back then, and ravenous. I used to dig through people’s garbage, and I know I ate rats or mice on several occasions.” Solya gagged, and Sarkan waited politely for his retching to cease. “For years after I came to Zamek Orla, I would hoard food in my little garret room. I’d stopped by the time you came to the castle,” he added. “I often skip meals or go a day without eating now, when my research consumes me. I’d—forgotten how terrible hunger is.”

“You are _not_ eating that rat,” Solya said a few minutes later.

“It’s too fast for us to catch, in any case.”

“—I know that wasn’t agreement, Sarkan!”

* * *

The harsh grate of metal on stone woke Sarkan. He blinked and watched the cell door scrape open in confusion before realization set in and he scrambled to his feet. Their captor stepped inside before he could catch more than a glimpse of the hallway beyond, but it was in a similar state of crumbling disrepair.

Sarkan glanced at Solya, but the other wizard had managed to fall asleep standing up, somehow.

“Are you hungry?”

Sarkan turned slowly back to their captor. Their voice was rough, and a heavy cowl hid their features. More pressingly, they had a loaf of bread in one hand and a pitcher of water in the other. How had he failed to notice those salient details? He reached for the bread, but the chain drew him up short. Solya slumped against him, his head colliding ungently with Sarkan’s shoulder, but he did not even rouse.

Sarkan drew his hand back before their captor could press the bread into his grip. It was one of the most difficult things he’d ever done.

“Who are you?” he demanded. “ _Where_ are we?”

He and Solya had been sent to Chekya as representatives of the king. He had thought they were in the dungeons of that country’s capital but—

But they had not even reached the capital.

Solya had not wanted to stop at any of the inns or keeps along the way. He had claimed it was because he doubted their hospitality would be up to his standards—which may well have been true—but Sarkan had suspected he was more worried his notoriety would cause problems. Solya had killed more than just the Nightingale in the three wars that had broken out with Chekya since they’d been Named.

The cave in the foothills where they’d stopped for the night had not met Solya’s exacting standards, of course, but they’d found a hidden mechanism that led to a deeper tunnel system. One of them had goaded the other, and they had both agreed to explore. Utter foolishness.

“You should not remember.” Their captor’s voice deepened, rumbling like the stone that was pressing down above Sarkan’s head. How deep underground were they? How long had they been here? He tried to draw on his magic, but the suppression cuff made working it into something stable impossible. “Forget. Forget. Forg—”

* * *

“Do you intend to sleep the day away?” Solya rattled the chain between them for obnoxious emphasis.

“How do you know what time it is,” Sarkan retorted before he even opened his eyes.

“I know it’s time for you to stop lazing about.”

Sarkan rolled his eyes and clambered to his feet. Solya winced as he let his arm down, chafing his hands together to encourage circulation. They stood in silence, Sarkan blinking slowly as he attempted to banish the lingering lethargy of sleep, until Solya said, “How long have we been here?” in a strange tone.

The thought made Sarkan’s head hurt. A few days, at least. Solya’s face had gotten bruised on the second day, or late on the first, and it had been—some time since then—

“I don’t know,” Sarkan said, and the pounding at his temples eased.

“No one has brought us food or water,” Solya said.

“No, there was—” Sarkan groaned and tried to double over. It felt like someone was driving knives through his skull. He pressed the heel of his free hand against his eyes, as if that could alleviate the pain. Finally, it began to recede.

“—an? Sarkan? Are you all right?”

The strange note in Solya’s voice had been suppressed panic; it was very much running free now, though. Sarkan straightened up with a grimace, biting back the pained noise that wanted to escape.

“I’m—fine.”

Solya did not dispute the obvious lie. “So long as you don’t resort to cannibalism.” His voice shook slightly, but Sarkan didn’t call him on that either.

“I was never that desperate,” he muttered instead, pressing his cheek against the cool damp of the stone wall. That it also conveniently turned his face away from Solya was merely an unexpected benefit.

Solya sniffed. “Had many opportunities, did you? I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that a toddler could find bodies on the streets of Varsha. That city has been a cesspit upon every occasion I visited.”

“I shall be certain to convey your concerns to the archduke as soon as we escape,” Sarkan said. He glanced over when Solya did not immediately reply; the faintly horrified look on his face cheered Sarkan immensely, the last of his headache fading. “I have no particular ties to Varsha, beyond it being part of Polnya,” he added. “I think I’ve been back—thrice, or perhaps four times—since I was sent to Zamek Orla.”

“It’s not so far from the Wood,” Solya said, rallying. “Closer than Kralia, certainly. You never visited your family?”

“What family? My first memories are of living on the street.” Sarkan regretted his candour when that appalled look returned to Solya’s face.

“I thought that was only—vicious rumour,” Solya said awkwardly. “Fomented by jealous peers that couldn’t hope to rival you.”

Sarkan squinted at him, trying to decide if Solya was including himself in their number. He certainly fell into that category, though he might still be delusional enough to believe the gap between them could ever close.

“No, it was the truth.” Sarkan shrugged. Alosha had been given charge of him, as the only witch or wizard with a family and any particular attachment to them; he’d considered her his closest confidant among Polnya’s magical set until Nieshka came along, and with Nieshka came Kasia, and the royal children, and Nieshka’s nosy family, and then the rest of the villagers of Dvernik—

Well, he hadn’t realized how lonely his life had been with only a scared young woman for company for long stretches of time. He had never been one for regret, and he did not allow himself that foolishness now, but the knowledge of time wasted—a decade lost, and their life in the valley, for the nine girls that had preceded Nieshka, never mind that they all left for safe environs after their term was up—sat heavily upon his mind.

Solya opened his mouth, then closed it. Still, he seemed as if he wanted to say something.

“You don’t intend to apologize, do you?” The very thought amused him.

“Of course not,” Solya snapped, in such a way that probably meant he had. “It was years ago.”

As if he had not spent a significant amount of his time spreading rumours while attending the young king in Gidna. Sarkan had been in Kralia, rooting out the last of the Wood’s corruption, but news traveled swiftly between Polyna’s main cities. It was Solya’s natural response to any reminder of Sarkan’s superiority, and what could the quelling of the Wood be but that? So the rumours had come as no surprise; at least he had kept Nieshka’s name out of it.

“And what of your family? Your father was made a landed knight when you entered training, was he not? And created a baron when you were Named.”

“I still visit the family seat,” Solya said. “Just long enough to spoil my nieces and nephews with gifts and stories. Or perhaps they’re my cousins, however many times removed.” The words belied his studied indifference; Solya knew every noble of Polnya, the better to ingratiate himself to them should the need or opportunity arise. But perhaps reminding himself of the years and generations that separated him from his parents and siblings by keeping obsessive track of his relations was too painful.

“This will make for an interesting story,” Sarkan said, a single wave of his hand encompassing the entirety of their tiny cell.

“We will never speak of this to anyone,” Solya hissed, and then only looked more offended when Sarkan laughed faintly.

* * *

“Wake up!” Solya’s fingers dug into his shoulder like his namesake’s talons; Sarkan’s teeth rattled together in time with the chain between them as Solya shook him hard.

“ _What_ ,” Sarkan snarled, wrenching out of Solya’s grip only to flinch back as he noticed their cell had another occupant. The figure’s silhouette was shrouded by the long cloak, but they looked—familiar.

“It’s the rat.”

“I am no rat—”

“What the f—”

“It’s the rat!” Solya insisted. “Or, it isn’t _a_ rat—but it is _the_ rat.”

“What the fuck,” Sarkan said, because it bore repeating: Solya was speaking even more nonsense than usual, and Sarkan couldn’t begin to parse it.

“I am no rat,” their captor began again, but a distant rumble of stone on stone drew them up short. They cast a glance over their shoulder, the motion revealing a flash of grey flesh along their jaw; a moment later, they scurried out and the door slammed shut behind them.

“That was not the rat,” Sarkan said thickly. Unusually groggy though he might be, he was lucid enough to know that the figure had been no rat.

“Couldn’t you _see_ —of course you can’t, you’re as blind as everyone else.” Solya made a noise of disgust, his mouth curled into a sneer.

“Your eyes have always been better than mine,” Sarkan conceded, which was such an understatement that it approached blatant falsehood. Sarkan could understand the theory behind the higher level sight workings that Solya employed, but he could never hope to use them himself.

“Obviously.” Solya paced forward, but soon drew up short with a curse. “That thing—whatever it is—has been concealing itself as the rat.”

Sarkan had never heard of a witch or wizard physically changing their form—overblown stories about semi-legendary personages like Jaga aside—but Solya should have seen through any illusions long before this. Perhaps the partial suppression of their magic had affected his sight?

“So there is only one rat?” Sarkan said a few minutes later.

Solya only gave him a look of speechless contempt.

* * *

“I saw them before,” Sarkan said.

Solya turned his head slowly to look at him. They were both standing for the moment. “You saw that thing before.”

“You’re rather fond of parroting words back to me.”

“ _Don’t_ start with the damn bird jokes,” Solya hissed.

“I saw the figure before. When you woke me up—” He didn’t know how much time had passed. That fact was a bit more alarming now than it had been before. Just what kind of enchantment was on these manacles? Or perhaps the figure was magical themself, and had worked some other magic upon them—

“When I said no one had brought us food and you panicked.”

“I did not panic,” Sarkan muttered, his head throbbing in remembered pain. Thankfully, the tampering the figure had done with his memory seemed to have worn off. “They offered me food. Bread and water. I almost took it.”

“And would have kept it all to yourself, I suppose. You do have a starving orphan look about you; I should have realized earlier.”

“I’m over a century old,” Sarkan snapped. His head felt clearer now than it had in days, though, and he knew he would have devoured the bread and drained the water without sparing a thought for Solya, much less the consequences of accepting food and drink from strange entities.

Solya waved a hand dismissively. “It was offering me—knowledge. Apparently there’s a collection of rare tomes somewhere in this warren. I know,” he added, annoyed, when Sarkan looked skeptical,“that it was likely a lie. But it wants us for _something_ , and it’s not completely incompetent at achieving that end,” he finished grimly.

What could an unknown being with the power to capture, confine and confound them possibly _want_ from them that it could not simply achieve on its own?

“If they were monitoring us this entire time as a rat,” Sarkan began, but—didn’t know how to finish. They both looked at the hole. It had seemed innocuous before, yet another sign of their captor’s incompetence and the general dereliction of their surroundings, but the point of darkness felt sinister now. How could they know the rat wasn’t observing them just beyond the shadows right this very moment, listening to their every word?

“We’ll sleep in shifts,” Solya said.

Sarkan didn’t point out that they’d more or less been doing that anyway: it was nearly impossible to sleep standing up, after all. Their increased awareness of the situation would hopefully make up the difference.

* * *

It was Solya’s turn to sleep when heavy footsteps drew steadily nearer to their cell. Sarkan shook Solya awake, a finger pressed to his own lips. Solya scowled in confusion, then obviously noticed that someone was approaching. He stood and brushed at his dingy clothes, narrowing his eyes at Sarkan’s palpable amusement. And Nieshka thought _Sarkan_ was fussy.

“Where are they?” As if he’d summoned her with his very thoughts, Nieshka’s voice echoed down the corridor to them.

Sarkan jerked against his bonds, jarring Solya back against the wall as he took two steps forward before the chain drew him up short.

“Just ahead,” their captor rumbled.

“Wipe that look off your face,” Solya hissed. “It’s embarrassing. And stop pulling!” He yanked back on the chain for emphasis.

The door opened a few seconds after Sarkan managed to school his expression. Nieshka stood next to their captor, her hair half-falling out of its braid, and what looked like days’ worth of dust and dirt staining her skirts.

She was the most beautiful sight Sarkan had ever seen.

Solya muttered something uncomplimentary beside him, but Sarkan ignored it.

“Where’s the key?” Nieshka asked.

“There is no key,” their captor said. “Either they would break out themselves, or—”

“Yes, I understand.” Nieshka’s voice was heavy with disapproval. “I’ll free them. You can go back to your duties,” she added pointedly, when their captor seemed unlikely to leave. She waited until their captor’s footsteps had receded down the corridor before stepping into the cell. She crossed its span in three swift strides and lifted Sarkan’s manacled hand in her own, examining the chain with narrowed eyes.

“Nieshka, what are you doing here?” Sarkan asked.

“Saving you two,” she said absently, as if it should be obvious. Then she raised her head, her eyes bright. “You called me Nieshka.”

“I—” Sarkan’s cheeks felt impossibly warm, which was—ridiculous. Mundane heat never affected him, and it was freezing down in this tiny cell besides. “I’ve used your name before.”

“Yes, but only during—”

“I’m standing _right here_ ,” Solya said loudly. “Chained to one of you, actually. Didn’t you mention something about freeing us, Agnieszka?”

Nieshka rolled her eyes and dropped Sarkan’s hand, only to seize his and Solya’s free ones in her own. Sarkan only had time to register the cool chaotic rush of her magic against his own—and more distantly, the sharp cold of Solya’s, as jarringly unpleasant as Sarkan had imagined—before she swept them both up in one of her incomprehensible workings.

The gleaming silver dimmed as the enchantment tried to prevent foreign interference, then brightened as it sought to suppress the magic Nieshka had formed and was forcing through the manacles. The cuffs glowed brighter and brighter until Sarkan shut his eyes, and still he could see the light through his eyelids.

The manacles shattered, unable to contain the powerful magic. The silver shards dissolved into nothingness before they could hit the ground. Sarkan gasped and would have fallen had he not been against the wall already; Solya jerked away from Nieshka’s grasp, sagging into the corner with a groan.

“Can you walk?” Nieshka looked worried. Sarkan smiled up at her; he was just glad that she was here. If anything, her expression only grew more concerned.

“I can do better than walk,” Solya hissed, surging to his feet with murder in his eyes. He swayed like a drunkard for a few seconds before staggering towards the doorway.

“Wait,” Nieshka said sharply; the cell door slammed shut before Solya could reach it.

Solya’s magic was chill against Sarkan’s heated skin, stinging like the first gust of a snowstorm; the torches burst into small pyres as Sarkan drew on his own magic in response to the implicit threat, dragging Nieshka behind him with the hand he was still gripping tightly.

“Honestly!” Nieshka yanked her hand out of his and stepped around him. “Stop it, both of you. You’re still—addled.” Her mouth twisted on the last word.

“ _I’m_ addled?!” Sarkan protested. He wasn’t the one trying to attack her.

Solya crossed his arms over his chest, affecting a haughty expression.

“I don’t know what the stone-sentinel did to you, but trust me: you are not entirely yourselves.”

“I’m not hearing any reason to spare that thing’s worthless life,” Solya said coolly, to which Nieshka only looked disappointed.

“He’s always been this petty and vengeful underneath,” Sarkan told her.

Nieshka sighed. “Maybe just—don’t talk. You’re both being very candid right now. It’s a little unnerving.”

Sarkan dutifully remained silent, but he did take her hand again. Not too tightly, in case that had been why she pulled away earlier. Nieshka’s brows knit together, but she said nothing either. If Solya grumbled uncharitably to himself, Sarkan chose to ignore it.

* * *

“The mountain-king has slept for several centuries,” Nieshka told them quietly as she led them through the warren of caves. Sarkan had become disoriented almost immediately—he couldn’t have found his way back to that cell if he’d tried, not that he wanted to—but Nieshka seemed to know where she was going, striding without hesitation around corners and down split passages, the slope of the passages leading unerringly up and up. “He left a number of sentinels to guard his domain, but there was a conflict with a Chekyan witch recently.” Here she paused, biting her lip, though her stride didn’t falter. “Well, recently by the sentinel’s standard. Probably not more than a century ago. Anyway, she enchanted all of the sentinels to follow her, except for the one that captured you. I don’t know what happened to the others, but they never came back.”

“They’re in Praha,” Solya said immediately. “Guarding the castle. I _knew_ I’d seen that thing before. I thought they were stone constructs animated by magic; they certainly weren’t sentient as this specimen seems to be.”

Nieshka frowned. “Well—I suppose we should tell him? Anyway, the sentinel was worried that his king hadn’t awoken for ages, and then he heard about what we’d done in the Wood—”

“He heard about that, but not the stone guardians in Praha?” Solya demanded.

“Someone enthusiastically encouraged songs about the Wood to spread,” Sarkan muttered.

“Polnya cannot afford another war after that battle with Rosya. Better that potential enemies think her wizards and witches too powerful to defeat.”

“Who spent another five thousand men fighting their allies?” Sarkan asked pointedly.

“Agnieszka and Kasia abducted the royal children!” Solya looked really furious at even the oblique mention of his and Marek’s folly.

“Enough,” Nieshka said. “I woke the mountain-king from his slumber and he confirmed that no, he really did just want to sleep for a little longer. Incidentally, that’s what the sentinel _abducted_ the two of you for. Apparently those shackles were a test of your worthiness to attempt awakening the king. A test which you failed, by the way.”

Sarkan bristled at that; beside him, Solya did the same. Of course, their reactions only made Nieshka snort, and when they both glared at her, she only laughed harder.

Sarkan, to his horror, found himself sharing a commiserating look with Solya. Perhaps— _perhaps_ —Nieshka was correct and Sarkan was too stiff for his own good, but his dignity was rather too bruised by recent events for him to appreciate her mirth at his own expense.

“We will never speak of this again,” Solya said.

“Certainly.” Sarkan was not eager to even recall the experience in the safety of his own mind. Had he really spoken of his childhood with _Solya_ —?

Nieshka stifled another laugh, the shaking of her shoulders evident through the hand still curled tightly around Sarkan’s own.

“What _now_?”

“Oh, it’s only—the two of you sound like a pair of regretful lovers disavowing a one-night stand.”

Sarkan couldn’t say what his face did in response to that highly unfortunate comparison. Whatever it was, Nieshka burst out laughing again at the sight of it.

“Excuse me?” Solya spluttered a moment later. “I have _standards_.”

“Not more of your standards,” Sarkan said. “Your standards are why we stopped in this godforsaken cave in the first place!”

“You’re the one who wanted to explore—”

“ _You’re_ the one who found the hidden entrance—”

“I can’t decide if being forced to stay in each other’s company has improved your relationship or not,” Nieshka mused.

“Don’t call it that,” Sarkan and Solya said at the exact same moment, then exchanged equally cold glares.

Nieshka only shook her head and pulled Sarkan by the hand toward the distant sunlight shining into the cavemouth: she had finally led them out of the darkness. Solya, as ever, followed at his heels.

[epilogue]

The stone-sentinel awaited them just beyond the entrance to its dark warren. The waning sunlight was more than bright enough to make out its harsh features, though it remained wrapped in that hideous cloak, and also to burn away what remained of the working keeping Solya _addled_.

“Don’t,” Agnieszka said, her hand closing tightly around Solya’s wrist before he could unleash suitable punishment for these past—days? Weeks?

For one blindly furious moment, he considered trying to _take_ her magic through that point of contact, as she had done to him and Sarkan back in that horrible cell. Perhaps it would work; perhaps not. But the retaliation from Agnieszka and Sarkan would not be worth it, regardless of the outcome. Solya released his coiled magic, and Agnieszka released his wrist.

The sentinel watched silently, its stone eyes utterly unreadable.

“What do you want?” Sarkan asked. Always so _curious_ , hoarding books and knowledge and _power_ and—not doing anything with it all. Wasting it on a handful of villages at the edge of Polnya! Solya would never understand the Dragon.

“Your destination was Praha,” the sentinel said. “Does it remain so?”

“Stashek wanted us to continue on, if possible,” Agnieszka said, to Solya and Sarkan.

“I would accompany you. So that I might free my fellows.”

Agnieszka spoke before Solya could tell the damn thing exactly what he thought of that: “What if they prefer to remain?”

The sentinel’s face hardened, but after several long moments it looked away, its gaze fixed on the setting sun, perhaps. “Then at least I will know what became of them.”

“We’re not taking the rat with us,” Solya said.

“You may call me Kam-yen.”

“I think we should help him,” Agnieszka said blithely. It was probably the same tone she’d used to convince Sarkan to fetch Kasia out of the Wood, and every other mad thing that they’d accomplished since Sarkan took her as his apprentice.

“ _Help_ him? We can’t just walk into the castle at Praha and steal their stone guardians!”

“We’ll sneak in, then,” Agnieszka said, unperturbed. “Assuming they even want to leave. Maybe they’ll want to stay.” She looked doubtful in that regard, however, despite being the one to voice the possibility in the first place.

Solya turned to Sarkan for support: following through with this fool plan would accomplish the exact opposite of what the young king wanted. Sarkan looked like he agreed—

“Attempting to bind ancient magical beings has never ended well in the past,” Sarkan said thoughtfully.

—but he agreed with _Agnieszka_ , of course.

“I thank you for your assistance,” Kam-yen said.

“I hate all of you,” Solya muttered.


End file.
